E-commerce Shop. Anyone have one?? Web Designers on here that can give advice?

blue_monkey_2

I am sick and tired of the site I have, it does not do what I NEED it to do and no-one can come up with any answers within the design team of the e-commerce site I have, so I wondered if anyone else has an e-commerce shop and how it works for them.

I know no advertising on here so please feel free to PM me (if this is allowed) so I can have a look but I am getting desperate. I got quoted 6k for a new site but I cannot afford to spend that much on a website as my profit margin is quite low. I have the website so I can be at home with my kids so I am certainly not going to waste 6k on a site with flashing whisteles and bells when the only thing missing is a decent search facility. At the moment it is an embarrassing mess.

The other option is for someone to help me out with what I need, I need a decent shop search, mine is crap, if you PM me I'll show you how crap it is and if I do more work on the site it means I have to move more things if we finally move. I do not know how to do the HTML, I am on EKM powershops at the moment, their designers have not come up with anything.

I do have a .com and .co.uk sites - both are merged at the moment but could use the .co.uk to get the feel of a better site (I would prefer the all-in-one online shop type that I can maintain) and set this up and run 2 sites for a few months. If you know what I mean.

Sorry if I am rambling, it is my one bugbear but it is the most important part of my shop because of what I sell and customers get fed up and leave. I am not sure if this post is in the right place so mods, pleas emove if need be, but I do not know where else to ask this.

Thanks.

scape

Has anyone contacted you about this yet? I'm a web developer/designer and I used to work for a web design company that made ecommerce websites. I'm not going to try and sell you services (to be honest, I avoid ecommerce now!), instead I think free advice might be better, since that is the point in moneysavingexpert.

blue_monkey wrote: »

I know no advertising on here so please feel free to PM me (if this is allowed) so I can have a look but I am getting desperate.

Can you provide the link to your site?
(I'm sure posting it should be fine based on the context, its not advertising... you've asked for help!)

blue_monkey wrote: »

I got quoted 6k for a new site but I cannot afford to spend that much on a website as my profit margin is quite low. I have the website so I can be at home with my kids so I am certainly not going to waste 6k on a site

It is inevitable you will have to pay a fairly significant amount of cash if you want your website re-done professionally. I know its a lot of money, but there are lots of very reputable web design companies out there that will give you a good deal. If you are going to go down that route, make sure you do plenty of research and try to go for a small cosy company rather than a coorporate giant or a bedroom coder.

Generally speaking, a quote will reflect the quality you get, although this is not always true. For example, a small web design company might quote £10,000 for a comprehensive ecommerce website, but a friend's uncles brother who does a bit of development on the side will say 'I can do that for five hundered quid'. Remember that an ecommerce website is your virtual shop front and a 24 hour employee that never gets ill or goes on holiday. If you think of it like that, 4-figure sums can be appreciated.

Even if you do not have the cash at the moment, I strongly recommend doing some more extensive research into further quotes. Remember, you don't have to accept any! Just see what people might be able to do for you.

blue_monkey wrote: »

...with flashing whisteles and bells when the only thing missing is a decent search facility. At the moment it is an embarrassing mess... The other option is for someone to help me out with what I need, I need a decent shop search, mine is crap

Its quite possible you have been given this quote because whoever quoted you decided it would be better to start from scratch with a new website, rather than 'bolt-on' a better search facility. This is why research is so important. I recomend getting at an abosulte minimum three quotes for a site re-design and separate quotes to fix just the bits you want.

blue_monkey wrote: »

Sorry if I am rambling, it is my one bugbear but it is the most important part of my shop because of what I sell and customers get fed up and leave.

Clearly you are very frustrated with your website, so I dread to imagine what your customers might think! Have you looked at statistics for your website? (Ask your web developer or hosting provider about this). You will be able to see exactly where people have come from, what they have looked at on your site and at what stage they leave. Its a good way of seeing what might be scaring potential customers away.

A comprehensive search facility is paramount for an ecommerce website. Depending on the type of products you sell, people also sometimes like to browse by category, tags, filters etc. Also, how do you get traffic to your website? If you increase online marketing, you might be able to increase turnover.

Hopefully that has been some help.

isofa

Have you looked at off-the shelf solutions like Channel Advisor and Roman Cart? Not to mention all the checkout and payment systems such as Google Checkout?

If you are starting from scratch to design a custom system, with a quality designer or company, then it's definitely going to cost a few thousand.

scape makes a very good point, you might be able to pay a student or a part timer a few quid to "rustle one up", but it's not going to be high quality, good quality site design costs money.

blue_monkey_2

HI everyone,

I posted this a while back - a while for me anyway, LOL, life never stands still and I have to be doing something and no need for doing work on a site that is pants!!

Anyhow, I decided that it was time for a change, had a browse around and called companies to see if they had retailers selling the same as me and see what soloutions they had in there shops. And I found one called bluepark which was perfect.

I get a good amount of traffic to the site I had now - I looked at adwords and in fact it is not worth it, for our main seller we rank higher than than one of the biggest selling UK retailers - if only the customer could find what they need when they get to the site but Adwords was going to charge £3.40 CPC so that is not worth it as we get little profit in what we sell to make that worthwhile.

I am posting, I am sure that mods will remove it if they want to or if someone feels it inappropriate but if you take a look you will see the massive improvement already. It is still in development so bear this in mind, the home page cannot be designed yet for example as I want links on there, but a bit of tweaking and I feel that I am really happy with the look and feel of it.

The site as it stands is www.lingerie-heaven.com the search facility is rubbish and I just had enough. I've transfered domain names, tonight I have to add Google Checkout (giving this a trial run) and then I'll be ready to switch to this site, then it is just a matter of transfering stock levels and goods from one site to the other (the most monotonous bit of course!!)

The site is being hosted at [URL="mhtml:!!4374FEB9-5E81-4457-892C-305D37F868A8}mid://00000045/!x-usc:http://bp5.betapark.co.uk/"]http://bp5.betapark.co.uk/[/URL] hopefully that link will work, I am developing it on this site until I am ready to transfer the domain to them (DNS or something, LOL). I am always open to suggestions but be gentle with me, being a sole trader I do not have vast resources. I have so much stock but it is getting there.

Now I am off to be a mum til bedtime then it is time to do some more work on the site so I'll be back to check some more. As I say, it is a huge improvement to what it is now and I hope others think so too.

Thank you for your messages, I'll be keeping them so that I have contacts if need be, if that is OK of course.